Lightning Reaction
by ELVincent
Summary: Written for the Fifth Annual Femslash Kink Meme. Prompt was: Claudia/any, Claudia's high-volt handcuffs. Claudia found the operating efficiency in the "Quick Escape" part of her genius brain had been seriously compromised. By the time H.G. cajoled her into raising her hands above her head, it was already game over.


"Can you please be careful with that remote? These aren't designed to be recreational!" Claudia Donovan feigned nonchalance, but the waver in her voice betrayed her as she felt her pulse thump rapidly against the cold, rigid steel of the handcuffs.

She wasn't quite sure how she'd ended up here, manacled to one of the ceramic pipes that skirted the edges of Artie's office. She was extra-crispy not sure why H.G. Wells was suddenly so interested in her modded handcuffs, and she was really extra fucking crispy-not sure why she'd let the British inventor put them on her in the first place.

But there they were, H.G. bent over Artie's desk, accidentally or intentionally giving Claudia a spectacular view. As H.G. fiddled with the screws that held the remote control together, Claudia surreptitiously wiggled her wrists. Of course, damn her brilliant, over-achieving self, the cuffs were just as escape-proof as she'd intended them to be.

"Don't worry, darling. I'm only making a few small adjustments." H.G. deftly opened the outer casing and began to tamper with the bits and bobs that lived inside.

"Look, H.G., I totally trust your legendary scientific mojo, but there are some seriously high tech bits in that thing and I'd rather not-"

Claudia's sentence was derailed by a quick jolt of electricity that started in her wrists and coursed down her body. She could feel every hair follicle on her body tensing, all the way down to the ridiculous ones on the top of her left big toe.

"Must have touched the wrong seriously high tech bit by mistake. So very sorry," H.G. said in a tone that made Claudia quite sure that she was anything but. H.G. glanced over her shoulder at her and smirked before deliberately tipping her screwdriver again.

"H.G., I get it! Jesus!" After another short burst all of her cells were vibrating. She almost regretted the times she zapped Artie, but she knew that the ends had justified the means.

Whether that would be the case this time remained to be seen.

At least she knew she hadn't enjoyed the process as much as H.G. seemed to be. The delight the inventor took in her tinkering was palpable. Claudia knew she was an experiment, and although she hadn't yet puzzled out the variables H.G.'s hypothesis relied on, it was clear that her current predicament had been well-planned.

"Here we are!" H.G. turned to her and smiled brightly, revealing the completed device. The button that Claudia had rigged to deliver the shocks had been joined by an old fashioned dial and the entire control had been restructured to curve gently in the user's hand.

"Oh, man, what did you DO to it? It looks like something Steve Jobs would have made. You've turned them into iCuffs!"

"I've improved them." H.G. corrected, an air of condescension in her breath. When Claudia didn't respond, H.G. brandished the device at her eye level.

H.G.'s aesthetic changes were seamless, and it annoyed Claudia to no end that, at least ergonomically, the new silhouette was an improvement. She would have had something witty and biting to say about teachers surpassing students, but all her brain could focus on was how uncomfortably close the brunette was standing.

Claudia couldn't take a breath without some part of her touching the other woman, so she tried to avoid breathing altogether. Her heart was still beating rapidly, though she couldn't be sure if that was a consequence of the shocks, or a reaction to the way H.G.'s elegant fingers were toying with the dial.

"This..." H.G. flipped the power switch on the new remote. "Now gives me complete control of the intensity and duration of the sensation of the pulse. I can change the level with this," she explained, rolling one knob from side to side between her thumb and forefinger. "And this one-" she pressed the button and a low-level current buzzed through Claudia, forcing her to inhale suddenly.

As she did, Claudia felt the warmth of H.G.'s body through her threadbare Nirvana t-shirt. She trapped the sharp, heated breath in her throat as the light smell of dark teas and lavender spirited nearly all of the blood in her body straight to her face.

"Well, I believe it's apparent what that one does. Some of your reactions, on the other hand, are unexpected" she said, pointedly drifting her hand over Claudia's erect nipple. "How fascinating."

As H.G.'s hand roamed, the tech genius really, really wished she'd put on a bra that morning rather than deciding to let the twins have a Casual Friday. To be fair, she'd expected to be alone doing inventory in the warehouse, and when she was alone she sometimes didn't bother to wear pants, let alone anything as optional as a bra.

But then H.G. had appeared, and she was so curious about Claudia's cuffs, and Claudia was so into impressing H.G. (who, beyond being one of the most brilliant minds ever, was also smokin' hot), that she dropped everything she had snagged from the Farnsworth Aisle like Artie's rules about the Farnsworth Aisle had finally registered, and bee-lined for the office.

When Artie confiscated the cuffs "for her own (and everyone else's) good," he'd squirreled them away in one of the many little drawers that surrounded his workspace. Claudia picked the lock in less than five seconds, and, although it was a particularly efficient-slash-wicked episode, she knew H.G. wasn't there for the "Claudia Donovan: Lockpicking Wizard!" show.

Under ordinary circumstances, if she'd been thinking clearly, Claudia would have questioned why H.G. was so interested in her little invention when she obviously could have just built her own (probably superior) pair, but at the moment, with H.G. standing so close to her, grinning and purring like the Cheshire Cat, she was finding it particularly difficult to think clearly.

Claudia found the operating efficiency in the "Quick Escape" part of her genius brain had been seriously compromised. By the time H.G. cajoled her into raising her hands above her head, it was already game over.

H.G. had totally sunk her battleship.

The only thing that remained to be seen was how awful (awesome?) it was to be shipwrecked. The brunette's left hand toyed suggestively with the dial while her right mirrored the motion on Claudia's left breast, turning her nipple to stone.

"There's a wide variety of sensations electricity can create in the human body. We're excellent conductors."

Claudia squirmed under H.G.'s touch, and assured herself that the nipple thing was totally an autonomic reaction and therefore not under her control. "Ugly bags of mostly water. Electrolyte central. Yep. Got it." 'Resistance really is futile,' she thought. She would have laughed at her own brilliance if she didn't think she would get zapped for it.

"At low levels, it can feel almost like a massage." H.G. turned the dial and pressed the button. "Albeit from the inside out."

The current was gentle this time and just barely made Claudia shiver. H.G. was right- she could feel the tension in her shoulders easing. It felt remarkably good.

"Increase the voltage slightly, and your cells start to go haywire." Another button press and the hairs-standing-on-end feeling was back for an instant, then gone again. H.G. seemed pleased that she'd wrung another tight gasp from Claudia, whose cheeks were now as flushed as the pink streak in her hair.

"Of course, full power transforms them back into what you'd originally intended," she murmured as she stepped back. H.G. paused, catching Claudia's eyes as she slowly turned the dial all the way to the left before prodding the button. Claudia's body reeled under the current.

"A very clever instrument of torture," H.G. mused quietly. She pressed the button again, holding it for no more than a millisecond, but by the time she released it, Claudia produced a muffled squeal, and a sheen of perspiration was beginning to show on her cheeks.

"This is what puzzles me." H.G. continued, speaking to no one directly but stepping back into Claudia's personal space. "How is it that such a sweet young woman could design such a device? Where pain is the only product?"

"It was the only way I could make Artie help me get Joshua back." Claudia managed to articulate through the intense exhaustion that gripped her.

H.G. seemed to consider this new information before shaking her head in emphatic disagreement. "You're a smart girl. Smart enough to know you had other options. But you chose this," she said, punctuating her words with a prolonged stab of the button.

Claudia might have screamed. She wasn't sure, because for a moment (she thought it was just a moment) everything went quiet and fuzzy and dark. She stared dumbly as H.G. slowly came back into focus.

"Don't worry. I've no need of torturing you. "

Even in the post-jolt haze, Claudia could tell that H.G. had no intention of releasing her.

"On second thought, perhaps pain wasn't the goal," H.G. said as she again drifted close to Claudia. "But, to exert control over another is a powerful thing. And this little jolt is so much quicker than putting some real work into it, right?"

Claudia was now totally lost on H.G.'s intent. "You know, H.G., you are totally right. I was wrong to zap Artie, and I have totally learned a valuable lesson. THE most valuable lesson. From now on I'll only torture people the old fashioned, hands-on sort of way. Drawing and quartering, Iron maidens, you know, the classics. So you can let me go now, out into the world where I'll never use these cuffs again."

As Claudia stammered, H.G. turned to her sleek brown leather satchel. She unclasped it and reached inside, producing several bundles of thin electrical cords, each set ending in a different metal apparatus.

"Erotic electrostatic stimulation wasn't exactly common in the 1800s." H.G. leaned close enough for her breath to send lighting bolts down Claudia's neck. "But in every age there are those who are ahead of their time."

"Well, H.G., you've always been an innovator," Claudia agreed, her eyes going wide as she flashed on a very vivid mental picture of where exactly those clips, clamps and coils were intended to attach.

"Even with the amperage significantly reduced, I think you'll find it a rather exhilarating experience." H.G. sized Claudia up one last time, like a cat cornering a particularly enticing mouse, before unwinding a pair of cords. Claudia could have sworn H.G. licked her lips before asking:

"Well, dear girl, shall we get started?"


End file.
